those subtle little things

[HappyHaddock]

I don't profess to be a great pilot so was pretty pleased to have brought down a Halb CLII without the rear gunner seemingly landing a single shot on me, but for the few minutes following I had a niggling feeling that I couldn't quite put my finger on that something was, if not "wrong" with my camel, somehow different. Consequently I started looking around for signs of damage or obvious smoking, leaks or vapour trails but all looked good.

 

I eventually identified my "concern" as the fact that although my engine didn't sound "bad" and possibly not even "different", I could persuade myself there was a somehow unfamiliar hint of a whine to it. Engine revs seemed more or less OK though perhaps a whisker below what I'd expect but things were running fine, I tried tweaking the fuel mixture but anything more resulted in spluttering and clouds of black smoke from running too rich so I returned settings to where they had been and carried on.

 

Had it been my car in real life I'd have thought to myself I must get the garage to check this out just to be on the safe side, but forgotten about doing anything about it by the  time I'd got home. As it was a further 10minutes or so into my flight the engine on my camel spluttered and died leaving me to glide down to land in a suitable field.

 

That a combat flight simulator should model battle damage from combat and/or stress failures from overworking an engine is not surprising, that it should model progressive  failure is not news but still a sign of a quality product, but that it should communicate such things in such a subtle manner as to leave you wondering if a stray bullet did hit your engine, or whether you just over-revved/heated it slightly at some point earlier when engaged dogfighting speaks highly of the real quality of the game engine behind Flying Circus.

 

I've said it before and will say it again, there are many "flight simulators" out there that offer endlessly complex button pushing scenarios with vast amounts of digital data being relayed back to banks of cockpit instrumentation, simulators producing bold and dramatic visual effects for catastrophic failures.

 

However for me the real test of any flight simulator is how well it can convey the "feeling" of flying an aircraft without relying on any of that; something that can be very subjective and reliant upon a myriad of subtle and easily overlooked factors. I don't know how subtle some of the sound effects in FC can be or if it was other factors that psychologically convinced me that my engine sounded different, but what ever it was it had that magic ability to create a sense of immersion without ever giving away which "strings were being pulled behind the scenes" in order to do so.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 29, 2019 by HappyHaddock